Saturday 10 May 2014

Very Versatile Vegetarian dinner

As I write this I have just come back from the school run completely drenched after what feels like months and months of wind and rain. It's May and I'm fed up of the cold weather and even the kids don't see the fun in putting on their coats and wellies for some outside play at the moment it seems. 

The folks at Betta Living are running a competition to find the best original vegetarian recipe so tonight I'm making a quick and easy dinner that will warm the kids and us grown ups right up. The best bit (for me) is that I made a big batch of sauce up at the weekend so all I need to do is defrost the sauce, cook some vegetarian mince and some pasta and we have an instant belly warming dinner of Vegetarian Spaghetti Bolognase.

The recipe is one I put together myself to try and get my kids to eat more vegetables without realising it.
The ingredients are:
1 Onion
1 Red Pepper (or a bag of frozen peppers)
6 Carrots chopped
2 Courgettes chopped
1 Celery chopped
2 tins of baked beans
2 tins of plum tomatoes
2 pints of vegetable stock.
Tomato puree paste to taste
Vegetarian Mince and Spaghetti 





To make the sauce you just pop everything into two big saucepans and leave to simmer for about half an hour or until the veg are soft. Then you blend with a hand blender until smooth. 

You can use this sauce on vegetarian mince to make a great spaghetti bolognese or add some kidney beans for an easy chilli. You can add some extra tomato puree and seasoning to the adult portions if you want. If you need a quick and easy kids meal you can just pop some of the vegetable sauce over pasta tubes or bows and top with some grated cheese.

The ingredients above will make enough for about 3 meals each feeding 5 of us. (2 adults and 3 kids) I usually freeze the other two portions so i always have an emergency meal when I'm running short of time.

I would say it takes about 10 minutes prep at the start, 30 minutes simmering and then 10 minutes at the end. 


This sauce is so versatile it also tastes great with Vegetarian meatballs.





Best of all everyone loves it at the end of a cold and miserable day or a hot summers day.



The Betta Living competition can be found at www.tots100.co.uk


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